


and we stand in the wake, of

by 110Percent



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Child Soldiers, End of the World, F/F, F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Horrorterrors - Freeform, M/M, Magic and Science, Multi, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Post-Apocalypse, alien culture and diplomacy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 18:08:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15148874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/110Percent/pseuds/110Percent
Summary: The apocalypse has happened, and humanity stands in its wake. Surprisingly, it didn’t occur during the first alien invasion.Your name is DIRK STRIDER. You, your family, and some other morally dubious and well connected people are working as part of a PARAMILITARY TERRORIST ORGANIZATION dedicated to investigating- and stopping- the "horrorterrors" that have descended upon your planet and the cultists that violently worship them. What remains of the U.S. government is unsympathetic. Her Imperious Condescension sort of hates you (but not that way). The arrival of these creatures has given many people, you among them, PSYCHIC POWERS that you can only hope will come in handy defeating the giant space abominations. You also hold, inside you, several appropriately sized buckets of TRAUMA, IDENTITY ISSUES, and ROMANTIC CONFUSION, all appropriate for an emotionally stunted eighteen year old.You, your SIBLINGS, and some trusty and not so trusty TROLLS are going to save the world. And possibly (definitely) die trying.





	and we stand in the wake, of

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dirk is introduced. A getaway driver makes an appearance. A doctor is visited. Exposition begins to rear its ugly head.

The radio is playing jazz, an unfamiliar track by an artist you’ve never heard before. It’s old-timey, sung by a woman whose voice warbles in a way that was only popular in the twenties, and it’s distorted to hell and back. The sound flickers in and out and in the spaces where words should be is a buzz of heavy static. It creates the convincing illusion that the singer’s crooning is pulsing in time with your heartbeat. It’s also giving you a headache.

What has really made your night is the representation of the culmination of the absolute clusterfuck that has occurred under your watch. It’s the cut sliced across your ribs that’s steadily leaking, even now, after a good twenty minutes and the spare shirt you’ve got pressed against it. Blood loss, combined with the fuzzy dregs on panic still cycling through your system, makes it difficult to keep your eyes from slipping off the road and rolling up into the back of your head. Your heart still feels like it’s been forcibly lodged in your esophagus. Despite your many attempts at rationalization, your hands keep trembling, and anxiety is still pumping through your bloodstream like a motorized butter churn that has blackmailed its way into getting a hold of the dairy farm’s remaining milk and is currently rapidly beating it into submission.

That metaphor has gotten away from you, but it’s hard to think right now. Your brain feels hazy and you feel trapped inside it, like a specter of a person who’s only able to recall the vaguest impressions of independent thought and is separated from their body by a curtain made of adrenaline and fear. Your body is on autopilot while your mind has retreated, recovering from the barrage of skullfucking terror that sunk into your nervous system and grabbed hold of your brain and- no. _Don’t think about that._ You’re not going to think about that. Repression is the first item on your to-do list tonight. You didn’t know they’d have someone who could use chucklevoodoos. You didn’t know chucklevoodoos actually existed. And you didn’t know chucklevoodoos could be, or feel, that strong, or that their effects could last so far away from the caster. Or maybe they can’t, and that gangly face-painted freak is following somewhere behind you, broadcasting fear and waiting for you to let your guard down so he can strike-

The wheel jerks to the right and your car jumps out from under you before you can beat back your hindbrain with a very large mental stick and wrest control of your hands with a ‘what the fuck are you doing, idiot, I didn’t give you permission’- and you dip off the road. Your car faceplants in the dirt. Your bumper catches on a rock as your wheels spin out on empty air, and then the whole vehicle shudders, jostling your ribs and the cut alongside them, which stings like a fucking bitch.

You hit the brakes. Or at least take your foot off the gas. Whatever you do, the car stops moving. You might be hyperventilating. You can’t resist the urge to grab for the rearview mirror, and you miss, fuck your shaking hands, what’s wrong with you, shake it off already, and you pull it down. All that’s behind you is an empty road that stretches out as far as you can see, a dark purple sky, and the faint glow of a far-off streetlight.

No. That’s not a streetlight. Or if it is, it’s equipped with some rather revolutionary technology that’s allowing it to crawl up the road with complete nonchalance, also known as at the speed of someone that knows this is a rarely travelled backroad and that you’re most likely incapacitated.

The front of your car, jammed into a rock and sitting a couple inches above the ground, strongly disagrees with your efforts to reverse.

Well then. You have neither the weapons for another fight or the stamina. You’re pretty sure you lost your gun and your sword back where the clown was. Scratch that, you’re sure of it, after a few desperate minutes of scrabbling under the seats of your car.

In your rearview, the solitary glow has split into two distinctly headlight shaped ones. You set your jaw. If this is your doom, you suppose you might as well face it. You’ll go choking on your pride. Just like all the other Striders.

Again, your body refuses to agree with your brain’s vision of a final showdown. As you pull yourself out of the car, you’re limping, and your arm pulls painfully as you reach under your shirt to unstick the makeshift bandage plastered across your ribs. It’s heavier with blood than you’d like, and you really hope that all that got nicked was a superficial bleeder and not something a more vital. You can’t remember if there are any major arteries along this side of the body, if the cut is deep enough to have nicked bone. Your brain refuses to recall, flitting around the information you know you have, and that worries you more that the physical injuries; your own mind betraying you.

The lead pipe you keep in your trunk has rolled to the back of the compartment, nestled next to a battered first aid kit. You think Noir gave it to you as a fucked up joke. You’d opened the passenger seat and there it was, laid as carefully as one can lay a lead pipe.

“It’s a bruiser.” Noir had said. He’d snickered when you’d first tried to pick it up, or wheezed. His lungs and larynx were made a casualty to his nicotine addiction long ago. You were fourteen, stick skinny, and had struggled to heft its considerable weight. “A little less fancy than your usual, but a man should have his variety in his toys, don’t you think?” It had made a cautious arc in the air when you’d first swung it, just to test it out, but you’d underestimated its weight it smashed into the car’s tail light. The glass had shattered, and the alarmed had blared, echoing throughout the garage as a dozens of people had burst from throughout the building to see what the problem was. Noir had doubled over as you’d turned bright red and just stood there, frozen, pipe hanging from your fist. You’d had to take another car into town. You’d peered through the window as the two of you slid from dirty alleyway to dirty alleyway, well out of view of the main streets. You’d kept the pipe on the edge of the seat, as far away from you as possible, and had tried very hard not to imagine the sound it would have made crunching into someone’s skull.

Now you just pick it up and sag against the side of your vehicle, waiting for the other car to approach. It’s shiny and black, sleek and poisonous-looking, and instead of stopping a respectable few feet away from you, it pulls up right alongside your car. A window lowers. You drop the pipe and let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. Your lungs tremble with ill-disguised relief.

“Hello, Dirk,” Rose says from the driver’s seat. “Need a ride?”

 

You turn off the radio as soon as you get in. Rose doesn’t comment, and just starts driving.

This is when you break apart. You double over and grip your head in your hands, trying to do it quietly as you can. Your breath is catching in your chest, too fast and too slow all at once, and your trembling has returned in full force. Sometimes, if hard pressed to the point of compaction, you’ll admit that Rose is your favorite in times like this. Dave would sit there, awkward and tense, waiting for a chance to escape, and Roxy would pull you into a hug that would expose your raw-scrubbed nerves and hurt in all the wrong ways, but Rose just sits there, keeps her eyes on the road, and drives.  

It’s a while before you’re able to say anything, and even longer before you can right yourself and slouch against the seat. Those panicky surges of adrenaline that were fueling you have made their course and left your body ruined in their wake. You feel like a wrung out dishrag. You feel like a dishrag that’s been wrung and then shredded; you feel like a dishrag that’s been wrung out and shredded and set on fire.

Rose looks tired too, and also just somehow… different. You don’t realize why until your gaze drops to her mouth; she’s not wearing makeup. Without it, she looks like a porcelain doll without its finish. Her lips are chapped, and she has circles under her eyes, darker than you’re comfortable with. It’s less protective instinct and more about discomfort. Rose and you are all about masks, about game-faces, about bullshitting. Rose, vulnerable, is not a sight you are meant to see. She’s also in her pajamas: striped pants and a purple tank top.

When you talk, your voice comes up scratched and rusty, like something has been clawing at your larynx with a piece of glass. “How’d you find me?”

“I had a dream.” Your speaking must translate as permission. She takes her first real obvious glance at you, lets you know you’re being catalogued. You find yourself mirroring the path of your eyes, taking note of the mud-encrusted hems of your jeans, your blood-spattered trainers, your sliced shirt, and, when she fixes her gaze on your face, you find a smear of dried blood across the line of your draw. You move to scrape it off, and Rose lays a black-tipped hand on your arm. “Don’t, please. I don’t want dried blood off the car.”

“First rule of driver’s ed,” you say. “Don’t take your hands off the wheel.” She rolls her eyes. Of all her habits, why hasn’t she outgrown that one? “Sorry, sugar, did they not cover that in remedial lessons?”

Rose doesn’t roll her eyes again, but she does squeeze your forearm a little too tightly for comfort. Her nails dig into your skin. “I’ll remind you that I passed those with flying colors.” Rose got a car for her birthday, promptly (and she claims purposefully) crashed it, and then received this beast. A luxurious black sedan, anonymous enough on the outside, but a whole new level of gaudy on the inside, fitted with purple leather seats and intricate silver filigree on every available surface. You live in fear of Romy’s passive aggressive power. You think Rose is saving up so she can buy her sort-of-mom something similar.

You both sit in silence for a little while longer. You guess you have to start. “They had a highblood psychic.” Rose, very obviously, does not react. “And not a juju user masquerading as one- an actual psychic. He used chucklevoodoos, and got inside my head so fast I didn’t know it was happening till he- till it was over.”

Rose _hmmms._ It’s very Freudian. “Do you know what his blood color was? Exactly?”

“Dark, bluish-violet,” you remember spilling some, getting a slice across that guy’s arm. “Fuck if I could name the exact shade, but not seadweller purple. A little darker than that.”

“I thought that the higher you were on the hemospectrum, the less likely you were to develop psychic powers.”

“I thought so too.” you say. The two of you lapse into silence again. “We work with troll psychics. Maybe they can  explain.” You both pointedly do not mention what a desperate flail this is. Trolls aren’t the type to reveal exactly how their powers work, and especially not their associated weaknesses.

Rose also, pointedly, does not look at you when she starts talking. “In my dream, you were wearing a strange pink outfit and being chased by a man with a skull for a face who was surrounded by horrorterrors. You got away, barely, but then you started… glitching, almost. Falling apart. And then the man found you, but you were too broken up to get away.”

“What happened next?” you ask.

“It’s not something to repeat in polite company,” Rose says.

She says it so coolly, so analytically, that it doesn’t sound like it’s anything that’s affected her personally, like it’s just some unfortunately gory story she heard secondhand, like oh, her neighbour’s pet ran into traffic and is now a pancake on the road, poor thing, we’ll never see it again. Not like she had a prophetic nightmare of her brother being murdered by someone who worships extraterrestrial psychic monsters.

The car makes a smooth turn along an exceptionally curvy part of the road, and the lights of the city- your city, are visible on the horizon, flickering bright and orange in the night.

“And how did you know exactly where to find me, sister dearest?” You’re going to call her on her bullshit. No way Seer dreams come with pickup coordinates.

Rose takes her phone from its place in the cupholder and tosses it at you. It hits you in the thigh. “I shared your location with me, O intelligent one.”

   

It’s about two in the morning when you pull up to a building you don’t recognize. It feels like someone is pressing your eyelids shut. You want to be in your workspace, or the lab, or curled up on the couch in Roxy’s room and dead asleep. Unfortunately, you’re still bleeding.

“Time for medical attention.” Rose says. She unbuckles you. You slouch deeper into your seat and mumble what you think is a protest. The passenger door jerks when Rose pops it open, and you can tell by the shape of her smile she’s going to hold this over you forever. “Dirk, do you need a hand? I’m happy to allow to lean on me as we traipse up these three very daunting concrete steps to a safehouse where you can finally get that cut on your ribs stitched up.”

“I can do it myself.” Not your best comeback. You’ll blame it on the blood loss. Even if the cut has, you think, in the time it took to get here, clotted. You’re hoping the doctor will just swab some neosporin on it and tell you to leave.

You successfully clamber out of the car. Your body feels like one big bruise. You’re hoping it’s a side effect of the psychics and not physical damage. Like a brain bruise that transmits pain to your body. But making your way out is the only thing you do successfully. The moment the asphalt crunches under your boots, your stomach begins to churn concerningly. Rose just watches as you twitch, shaking your head like a cow under attack by a persistent blowfly, standing a few feet away with her arms crossed. This is also why Rose is sometimes your least favorite. She’s always the one to push, whether it be your pride or your physical limits or just anything, really. There’s no saving face with Rose. No saving anything.

“Give me a hand.” you try. No inflection. Rose’s lips just purse. Ugh. “Please.”

You end up with the whole arm, and lay your weight against her as you both hobble towards the nondescript building with the peeling red door.

    The inside is far cleaner than the outside implies. The room you emerge in is tiled in various shades of grey, but it’s not because of disrepair, just an unfortunate color scheme. It’s a strange juxtaposition of sterile and homely, medical equipment laid atop leather chairs cracked with age and scuffed wooden tables. You’re not yet sure how that makes you feel about the future of your wound. What you assume is a medical table is in the room’s center. It looks vaguely like an ironing board resting on some additional supports, draped in a plastic sheet, but hey, who are you to judge.

Rose hip-checks you towards the table. You stumble onto it. “Shirt off before the doctor arrives, dear,” She plunks herself down into an armchair. “And don’t embarrass me.”

You seat yourself on the table and begin working on peeling your shirt off. It’s stuck against your wound like a second skin, and tugs on the edges of the cut as it lifts off. You’ve had worse, but this is no picnic.

“I’m your least embarrassing pseudo-sibling,” you say. What are you- ah. I see.”

Rose is idly flipping through a women’s fashion magazine. “I’m sure you do.”

“Who’s the lucky lady, Rose?”

She turns another page. “Nobody.Yet.”

“Planning to woo her? Or is she impervious to your charms?” Rose is not the type for wooing. All you’ve observed of her haphazard romantic endeavors are aggressive pursuits followed by short, messy, endings. You’d barely call them relationships. “I didn’t think you were a nurses and needles type of gal. Dave is certain you’re strictly corsets and bondage. Don’t ruin it for him.”

    “Nobody’s impervious,” Rose looks like a cat who has gorged herself on a canary and the saucer of cream, too. “And please, Dave would rather talk about his feelings than unironically discuss my kinks, of all things. Are you sure you aren’t projecting, Dirky-poo?”

She finishes her sentence before another door, not the one you arrived through, opens. Out steps a willowy troll, with a set of elegantly curved horns placed in short dark hair. She appears surprised to see the two of you, but maybe it’s just your respective appearances. “Rose,” she says. It comes out as a breathy exhale, startled pleasure curling up at the end of the “e”. “And… guest?”

You keep your face deapan behind your shades and wave.

The elegant troll introduces herself to be both Kanaya Maryam and the doctor on-call here. You learn that this is a not-quite-legal operation that is at least sophisticated enough to have things like “on-call”. She begins your meeting by dousing your cut with hydrogen peroxide, and probing not so delicately at the wound with her fingers. You clamp your teeth down on a hiss.

Kanaya makes an apologetic face, downturned lips with a hint of Bambi eyes. “My apologies.” Her voice is strange, with an accent unlike anything you’ve heard on Earth. Her English is accompanied by a vague subvocal clicking and hissing, like her throat closes differently around words than yours, and her teeth only get further in the way. She also has fangs. You’ve never seen those on a troll before. “I occasionally forget how delicate humans are.”

“That seems like an important thing for an interspecies doctor to remember.” One of Kanaya’s claws is now dipping between the separation in your skin which is, thankfully, not leaking anymore. “Jesus girl, I hope you keep your claws clean. Are you even certified?”

Rose’s booted foot attempts to make contact with your leg, but hits an ironing board support instead. It wobbles dangerously. You send her a look, pursed lips, very “Goodness gracious, young miss,”. Rose will probably try to wreak bloody revenge later.

“By your hospital standards, I would say barely,” Kanaya says. Well. At least she’s honest. “I promise, however, that I am at least qualified to treat a wound of this caliber.” She pulls out a needle from a kit somewhere by your head. “I’ve numbed it, but I’d appreciate it if you tried not to move too much.”

As she stitches you up, she continues. “I was a seamstress, but once the horrorterrors arrived, there wasn’t much demand for my previous profession. And as it turns out, sewing clothing isn’t that different from sewing up people.”

You crane your head to watch her work. It’s odd, to see the needle pulling through your skin and only feeling a faint twinge. You think you’d be used to it. Kanaya isn’t lying. The evidence of her training is there, holding your skin together, impeccable and precise.

Rose interjects. She’s cast aside the pretense that she’s actually reading the magazine. “I’m certain you could return now. The world could use more beautiful clothing.”

Kanaya shakes her head. “Our respective governing bodies may claim that we are in a period of reconstruction, but we both know things are hardly better now than they were right after. Unfortunately, the world still has a greater need for back-alley doctors than extravagant dresses.”

You almost laugh, not because it’s funny, but because she sounds so honestly heartbroken for the fate of fashion rather than the essential end of the world. “Anyways, I have found a fondness for it,” Kanaya says.

“For operating on bodies?” Rose asks. Puzzled earnesty looks strange on her.

“For helping people.” Kanaya’s smile has gotten soft around the edges. So have Rose’s eyes.

   

When Kanaya is done, she sets aside her needles and reaches for a king-sized tube of neosporin. You didn’t know they made them that large. She hands it to you. “You’ll have to apply it yourself,” she says, glumly. “I’m afraid human antibiotics give me hives.”

You smear it on. “Your cut was largely superficial,” she says. She’s dipping her tools in a clear solution, probably rubbing alcohol. The blood dissipates off them, spreading through the solution in translucent red plumes. “You lost enough blood to make you woozy, but you won’t need a transfusion. Eat red meat. The bruising will heal faster than the cut. Try not to engage in any sort of strenuous activity, at the risk of your side ripping open.”

You lift yourself off the table. Three points to Dirk, movement is a go. “Strenuous activity is my job description.”

“We’ll keep him under control.” Rose says. “I’ll make sure of it.”

“I appreciate the effort, Rose,” Kanaya’s voice is warm. “I’d hate to have all my work come undone.”

“You have any spare shirts?” You interrupt, and take a bit of joy in the way Rose’s lips thin.

She does, it turns out. The one she hands you is plain, white, and comfortable.  

Kanaya is now avidly staring at your midsection. You’re about to ask an inappropriate question, and you’re curious to see just how she squirms, but she beats you to it. “If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly made that cut?”

    What you and your family does is a public secret. Not talked about anywhere besides behind a specific highly secure set of closed doors, and never addressed openly, and especially not by strangers. Bro and Romy have a hefty reputation dating back to first contact, and given that, a lot of people are surprised you work with trolls. But it’s not xenophobia that keeps people from asking, it’s fear. You, specifically, are a killer. So are a lot of people in your organization. You are a killer who is part of a group dedicated to discovering, and stopping, what caused what is commonly known as the apocalypse, even though that isn’t strictly accurate, and about three quarters of the world’s population is still alive. Even in Houston, where almost everything was bombarded by horrorterrors and only about half the surviving residents showed signs of changing, and a quarter of those violent changes, people are still scared. And the fact that both the media and government have branded you a paramilitary terrorist organization helps nothing.

More importantly, both Noir and Bro have pressed it into all of you that divulging information to outside parties is a big no-no. Even if Homeland Security isn’t actively working to stop you, they don’t like it when you’re featured in the news too often. And the Alternian government is downright hostile, considering you’ve killed a lot of their cultist officials. And even Kanaya, a friendly-ish alien who patched you up at two in the morning, could be a plant.

Rose beats you to whatever you were going to say. “Dirk ran into a rather unfriendly troll tonight while he was out on a midnight jog.”

“Understatement of the century.” You try to roll with the punch while sending her extreme ‘what the fuck’ vibes. “Apparently cultists enjoy romantic strolls in the moonlight with their weapons

“Yes,” Rose says. “Along with bladed clubs, facepaint, and rather large backup possies.”

“Ah,” Kanaya exhales. Under all that slate grey skin, she looks a little paler. An emotion passes over her face too quickly for you to name. “Bladed clubs do sound rather intense.”

“They were.” You return. “Ever run into any before?”

You stare at each other. You don’t miss Kanaya’s hand dipping into her pocket.

 “And then I had a prophetic dream that allowed me to track down my older pseudo-brother and cart him away to medical care,” Rose says. You are hit with a blinding, indescribable wave of ‘what the fuck’ and “has Rose finally lost it?”. “All in all, it’s been a long night.”

You are struck with the urge to grab your sister by the collar and shake. “Okay. We’re leaving now.” You’re very tempted to haul her bodily out by the scruff of her shirt, like you would with Dave if he ever did something so stupid, but you know she’d be a brat about it and jab you somewhere unthinkable with one of the weaponized knitting needles she has in her purse. Fortunately, for both of you, she decides not to make a scene and rises to her feet, smoothing out the nonexistent wrinkles in her pajama pants.   

“Thank you, Kanaya,” said troll looks like she’s a hair's breadth away from flipping out and knifing you, or dissolving into a flustered puddle. “My brother and I are, as always, quite thankful for your services.”

You miss her reply, as you’re too busy stomping out of the clinic. You try to open the car’s door, so you can sit and glare angrily inside, and then you remember Rose has the keys. You make the executive decision to learn against the vehicle until Rose arrives.

She does, shortly. You stare her down. “That was extraordinarily stupid of you.”

She presses a button on the keyfob. The car’s headlights flash twice. “Do you want a ride home, or not?”

 

You remain quietly furious. Rose turns on the radio again, to spite you. It’s still jazz, and it still makes your head hurt. You’ll need to get that looked at when you get back to base, make sure your head isn’t scrambled like one of Roxy’s breakfasts. You’ll also have to make debriefings, probably immediately. You don’t know whether or not to mention what Rose has done. Maybe you’ll be able to get some food. Maybe they’ll have something besides donuts in the coding room.

Outside the window, the sky is lightening, to a sort of navy blue, and the stars are fading against their background. You were born after first contact, so it’s hard to imagine the stars like people on the radio or online or in old astronomy textbooks used describe them. Like they’re just harmless twinkling lights in the sky, or that space is just a vast, untameable emptiness around you, meant to reassure you with how inconsequential you are, comparatively. Now that aliens are real, you know there are more out there. Each bright speck in the sky is a sun around which other planets orbit, on which other life, possibly, lives. It only makes you wish you could imagine feeling alone in the universe.

Rose breaks the silence first. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“When it comes to our collective safeties, you do. You understand what you just did, right? You unveiled your class, maybe your aspect, to a troll who isn’t even allied with us. Who could be running to her cultist friends right now with a plan to off us.”

Rose doesn’t even emote. “She’s an informant, Dirk. She knows somebody who knows cultists who has been feeding her information with the hope she could find someone to do something with it. And you just essentially just spat in her face as thanks for the extremely dangerous service she’s providing. Great job.”

Well. “Informants can still be plants.”

Rose brakes a little too hard at a stop sign. You narrowly avoid being launched into the dashboard. “Do you ever get tired of being so paranoid, Dirk?”

“Not when it’s kept everyone I know alive.” You are very tired of fighting. “Don’t tell strangers sensitive information about how you were altered in an alien touchdown, Rose. Is that too much to ask? Am I being unreasonable?”

“You have Sollux.” The car is moving again.

“Sollux and I,” you say, and get the feeling the metaphorical wheel has been yanked from beneath your hands, “are strictly professional. He knows my aspect because he’s contracted to work with us.” Popular nomenclature has forced experts to abandon a precise scientific name for a psychic phenomenon for an overly simplistic term that’s probably yanked straight from some obscure video game. You and Roxy both kind of love it. “All he is is a hacker I employ to make understanding both code and giant space monsters easier for me.”

“Please, he’s a hacker you employ to decipher code you can’t even begin to understand.” Someone’s bitter. “Besides, I’d label quadrant smearing fliration a little beyond professional.”

You are going to skirt around that tangled mess for as long as possible. “Your budding flirtation with miss back alley doctor is sure as shit twice as bad as whatever you think I have going on.” It’s true. Possible not-so-platonic bickering with Sollux isn’t even a situation comparable to this one.

“At least, Dirk, I can be honest about my intentions.” Rose snaps. “You seem to have a chronic fucking affliction in that department.”

The barb cuts deep, as intended. Shreds, even. You don’t know if she meant to bring him up, if she’s even talking about Jake, but he’s the first thing that comes to mind. Long, dark eyelashes, green eyes, and the knowledge that you’re truly a special kind of asshole.

The drive is a lot longer in silence. Another thing about Rose: she loves you, in the painful way that siblings do, but you know you are nowhere near her favorite.

  


 

grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began pestering carcinoGenetecist [CG]

GA: Karkat  
GA: Please Wake Up This Is Important  
GA: I Think You Are In Danger  
GA: Gamzee Is Back And He Is Working With The Cultists  
GA: Again

**Author's Note:**

> probably wasn't as goofy as the summary implied. I really hope you enjoyed, tell me what you think! <3 here's a snippet from a future, possibly next, chapter:
> 
>  
> 
> _"Your name is Karkat Vantas, and some blonde human stranger has just jumped in through your window, kicked your computer off your desk, and pinned you to the floor with a sword to your throat._  
>  Today is not your fucking day."


End file.
